Howard Hawks outdid himself in 1946 with this, the first entirely successful adaptation of a Chandler/Marlowe novel. Humphrey Bogart has since been indissolubly linked with Chandler's cynical but honourable LA shamus, no matter how many successors have tried on his raincoat and battered fedora since. Hawks emphasised the wit and world-weariness of the original – the screenplay by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner is a never-ending succession of indelible one-liners and double entendres.

He also amped up the sexual electricity between Marlowe and the many women he encounters or fights off. Besides Lauren Bacall's smouldering Vivian Rutledge and her blowzy sister Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), there's an early encounter in a bookstore with future Sirk-siren Dorothy Malone that is so erotic it will remind you why your grandparents said they "preferred it when they kept their clothes on". (Malone does remove her spectacles.) Along the way, the arcane mystery, with its plot twists and switchback betrayals, fades into the background as Hawks loses interest in culpability or denouements (even Chandler couldn't say who committed the opening murder). Instead he dwells happily on the crackling chemistry he has created onscreen.